McAdenville strings holiday lights throughout mill village

Saturday

Nov 25, 2017 at 3:14 PMNov 27, 2017 at 11:35 AM

Elise Franco Staff Writer efranco_shj

Christmas Town USA came about by accident.

A long tradition of lighting up the North Carolina town of McAdenville began in 1954, when four Pharr Yarns employees - Harvey "Dick" Roberts, Dorus Woodward, Billy Alexander and Neil Hagan -- decided to put up a few decorations near the mill.

Unbeknownst to them, the seemingly small gesture has become a Christmas phenomenon that brings hundreds of thousands of people through the tiny town each December.

Starting small

"We were just talking one day and said that we ought to do something to spruce up a little bit for Christmas because it was awful drab around here," Roberts said.

Roberts said after work one evening, the men used discarded metal rods to form "Christmas Town" into letters that stood about 4 feet tall. "We put them over on the hill above where the fire department is now, ran a drop cord from a house and put white lights on it," he said. "You could see it to Belmont."

They also made stars that hung on the old mill tower and strung white lights onto a tree in front of the company's main office. When company co-founder William Pharr saw the display, he suggested the men do more the following year.

And so they did.

"I think we did about six or seven trees that next year, and he got excited about that, and Mrs. Pharr did too," Roberts said. "He said, 'I’ll pay for y’all to put it around town,' and that’s when it really started."

Now, 63 years later, there's not a house, shrub or tree that goes undecorated in the town of around 700 residents.

Over the next couple of years it began to expand when the people started decorating their porches and houses, and that caught on," Roberts said. "And they all decorate, to this day, and that’s what makes it so unique."

Creating Christmas Town

Steve Rankin, who created the official Christmas Town website in 1996, said a three-man crew starts work on the lights around August, checking each bulb to see what needs replaced. By September, the process of stringing lights up into trees has already begun.

"These are not the little light bulbs you’d have on your tree in your house," he said. "These are big 'ole, 12- to 15-watt lights, and thousands are burnt out or broken each year."

Rankin said the crew decorates upward of 500 trees throughout town, as well as any trees on homeowners' properties, totaling somewhere around 500,000 individual lights.

Pharr Yarns continues to pay for the annual display, which is estimated to cost about $150,000 per year. Roberts said, however, that the family prefers to stay out of the spotlight.

"When Mr. Pharr started this, he always said it’s strictly for family entertainment," he said. "The only thing any of us wants out of it is the pleasure of seeing kids' faces pressed against the car window, looking out.

"It’s something the company enjoys doing for the people, and they have for all these years."

Rankin said because residents are responsible for the cost of decorating and lighting their own homes, there was a worry that eventually some folks would break with tradition. But that has never happened.

"We were so afraid that newer people moving into the community wouldn’t want to do it, but it’s been the opposite," he said. "They want to decorate, they can’t wait."

Rankin said the display has consistently been a huge draw because it's unique and always delivers on expectations.

"What makes it so unique is that it's real people, in a real town, decorating homes," he said. "You don’t see that on golf courses and motor speedways."

"We had volunteers standing out in the rain, the cold, for 23 nights straight who would stop and ask folks to take a survey as they pulled through," he said.

The survey data was shared with organizers the following January and revealed that an average of 600,000 people and 200,000 cars come through McAdenville during each lighting season. The event also brings $12.8 million into the local economy in Gaston and Mecklenburg counties.

Additionally, Rankin said 75 percent of visitors came from outside Gaston County.

"If we were to do it again now, I don’t think those numbers will have changed much," he said. "You only have one road through town. You’re not going to get any more cars through, whether it’s 2004 or 2017.

"If you live where I do, you wouldn’t doubt that at all. You can be on I-85 at 11 at night, and as far as you can see toward Charlotte, toward Gastonia, it’s backed up."

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